10 Movie Special Effects Nobody Believed

7. The Car Chase Tracking Shot - The Raid 2

The Special Effect

Nobody who's seen The Raid 2 will ever forget its astounding car chase sequence, shot with such brilliantly immersive seat-of-your-pants style it's incredible nobody was killed or seriously injured pulling it off.

The most memorable moment is unquestionably a tracking shot in which the camera exits from the window of one car, passes through the window of another and emerges out the other side just as another vehicle passes by, all captured in one smooth, unbroken take.

Director Gareth Evans pulled it off by having one cameraman pass the camera through the car window to a second cameraman who was disguised as one of the car's seats, allowing his face to be easily painted out in post-production.

This disguised cameraman then passed the camera out the other side of the car to a third cameraman, who was lying down on a piece of rigging on the other side of the car. Between them, they held the camera up for a few more seconds while a car zoomed by.

Why Nobody Believed It

Because it really doesn't seem like something you could achieve practically with total safety, and countless other films have used CGI to digitally stitch similar shots together.

Naturally most viewers presumed that the scene was comprised of several CGI plates joined in post-production, but aside from removing all traces of the car-seat cameraman, this was achieved fully in-camera with no invisible cuts.